


Queens of Promise

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [39]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, vuvalini culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12090567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Vuvalini ceremonies start with a story and end with rebirth. To become a new Green Place, the Citadel needs both.





	1. Chapter 1

It was one thing to help the Wretched climb onto the lift, to see the water falling and know that Joe was dead. It was another thing entirely to live in the Citadel he had built, after he was gone and chaos crept into all the corners. The Wives could not rule it on their own. The Vuvalini did not _want_ to rule it, because no one could and remain human. So they talked, talked until their voices were hoarse. Talked until fingers had come off of triggers, and hands off of knives. Talked until Corpus was quiet, sullen in his child’s body.

“We don’t have _enough_!”

“We will share what we have, then. And they will help us make more. Strong bodies work harder, longer. And we are strong,” Capable looked around at her sisters. “So we will work with them.”

There were Milking Mothers who longed to be cooks, Wretched who wanted the high air of lookout posts, War Pups willing to trade their chalky hands for legs to work the lifts. It was not that simple, of course. Anything involving humans rarely was. They needed only so many cooks, could trust only so many hands among the greens. In this the Dag was adamant—she would put their hands on leaves themselves, or they would not touch it. Capable did not have the time or the energy to argue with her, and so the tops of the Towers were given to the strange silver prophetess and her vixen.

Cheedo the Fragile was the one who talked the least. It was not because she didn’t talk—she was the best tale-teller of all of them, knew how to say the words so that everyone within earshot stopped to _listen_. But she had set herself to freeing the dark places of the Citadel, with Jiemba to be her eyes when the sunlight was gone. She was gone most of the time, day and night alike, surfacing only to bring Joe’s leavings up into the light. She brought up artists, Mothers, malcontents who Joe had thought to break in the darkness. All of them knew the story of the Fury Road, and all of them fell to their knees to swear fealty to the Wives.

Every morning that they were still alive, Capable went and spoke with Corpus. She kept him alive against the advice of the Vuvalini, against Toast’s words, against the will of the Mothers and the Wretched. She kept him alive herself, and the key to his door hung around her own neck. He was a well of poison, cursing her and her sisters and their futile attempt at peace. His rat daemon would snarl and snap if Caelai got too close, would charge with his yellow teeth bared if their argument grew too heated. He was the poison she drank to make herself stronger, to make sure she could survive it. If she could survive his words, then the words of the Wretched and the Mothers could not touch her. So she kept him alive, and then she went out and argued again for the world Angharad had believed in. The one Nux had died for.

Toast had never been patient. She had never sat down to a task and said, _this I will do before everything else_. So she could be found at any time or place; talking down fights, counting out bullets, tasting the water in Joe’s old throne room. She more than any of the Wives knew the only law of the Wasteland: whatever you could enforce _was_ the law. It was Toast who came back to her sisters with a split lip, a black eye, a broken finger. They did not ask what she had done, and she did not tell them. Not even the day she came back with a stab wound in her side for Annie to cluck over and bandage.

The alethiometer became a treasure once again. Instead of turning it outwards, to test the future that swirled around the Wastes, the Wives turned it inward, to the tunnels and caves of the Citadel. They asked what would happen if a slur-speeched woman named Smoke took over the pumps? Would the Wretched riot immediately if the water was shut off or could they be reasoned with first? Could they afford to feed more Wretched without risking their own lives? And the alethiometer answered, though they rarely understood the entirety of that answer.

Furiosa remained so still, so wounded, that they could not rely on her. It was terrifying, even with the Vuvalini there to help. In Furiosa’s absence, the Wives made themselves the image of the new Citadel, and every day they struggled to keep the fragile peace alive and breathing. Every day they struggled to feed and water the people who had torn Joe’s body to shreds, who had longed as much as them to see Him dead. It was impossible, of course. Maybe it always would be. But the days passed inch by inch, and the peace lasted. For every rioter and agitator, there would be another to stand up and ask if they had forgotten what the Immortan had done to them? What his Wives were trying to undo?

Into this, Cheedo and the Dag came to Furiosa and asked to be made Vuvalini. To be made Queens. Furiosa and her daemon agreed on the hundred and sixtieth day.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time the Citadel saw her again, it was on her own two feet at the bottom of the Water Tower. A place had been cleared for the Wives and their daemons to stand, a place that had been a road so long that even the dust of the Wasteland remembered that shape. Furiosa stood in the dusk with a bonfire at her back, one-armed and bare-headed. Annie and Gale stood with her, rifles on one shoulder and daemons on the other. (On the fortieth day of their Return, a small bright nightingale had arrived at the bottom of the Citadel, asking for a witch who shared his name. Gale had whistled to him from the Garage, and he had gone to her. If there had ever been a doubt that the Vuvalini were witches, were as old as they claimed, had as much magic as they claimed, it was put to rest by the sight of a daemon flying free across the three towers of the Citadel.)

There were two fires, as there had been for Furiosa’s initiation. The first fire was made of flaking embers now, the remains of Joe’s bed and the wooden throne he had kept in his rooms. The Wives had thought it very fitting—had laughed when they threw guzz on the wood and lit it up.

The second fire was still burning strong, lit just as the sun slipped below the horizon and made of clay mixed with guzz and oil-soaked sand from the Garages. If this had been the Green Place, it would have been the gathered Queens of the Vuvalini sitting around this fire, all of them in winding desert robes and all of them with daemons on their shoulders. The fireside was crowded with people, none of them witches, all of them silent and waiting for magic in the dark. There were Wretched there with their missing limbs or eyes or daemons, there were Milking Mothers with their breasts bound up in white cloth. There were War Pups in a huddle, mingled daemon and boy with a child’s disregard for safety. For boundaries.

On the other side of the second fire were the Wives.

Like all witch matters, this would start with a story. Furiosa had practiced it so often in her room that she could recite it sleeping. After a few days she could even do it without emotion, the way the Citadel had taught her. “I am one of the Vuvalini witches. The last of the Hellcats and the Swaddle Dogs. My mother was Mary JoBassa. My initiate mother was Katie Concannon. As a child I was taken from them and brought to this Citadel. I was one of the Wretched, and then a War Boy, and then an Imperator. But I was always also Vuvalini. I am the last of my clans.” She paused for a beat to blink the sting out of her eyes. It was only the oil fire behind her, she told herself, and went on. “I am queen of the Hellcat and Swaddle Dog clans by right of birth and my daemon’s freedom. Anyone who would join me must walk alone through the fire and the desert.”

“I am the Nightingale, the last of the Iron Eagle clan. My mother was Alinta Hale. My initiate mother was Latani Walton. I am queen of my clan by right of birth and my daemon’s freedom. Anyone who joins me must walk alone through the fire and the desert.”

“I am Atomic Annie, the last of the Quick Lizard clan. My mother was Tamala. My initiate mother was Hunter Paige. I am queen of my clan by right of birth and my daemon’s freedom. Anyone who joins me must walk alone through the fire and the desert.”

Across the bed of embers, the Dag hugged her vixen to her chest and then set her on the ground. Cheedo cupped her bat between her hands and followed suit. Toast stepped forward boldly, her badger digging his claws into the sand. Capable waited for the others before she moved, her hair dancing in the light of the flames. All of them were together when they crossed the fire, sprinting through the heat. All of them stood in front of Furiosa and the Vuvalini, shivering with the weight of what was to come.

“My name is Toast the Knowing.” Furiosa was not surprised that Toast was the one brave enough to speak first, but she had to brace herself for the words anyway. “My initiate mother is Furiosa JoBassa. I will walk alone through the fire and the desert to be one of the Vuvalini.”

Aurelio had to dig his claws into her shoulder before Furiosa summoned the strength to speak. “You will be Mother and Queen of the Swaddle Dog clan,” she said, and hated the tightness in her chest. Why was this so much harder than lying to the Wretched about who she had killed? Why was this harder than standing in front of Joe every day and _helping_ to keep the Citadel under his rule? This was good, this was right, she wanted this. She hated that it hurt. “We are the protectors of the Green Place, road warriors and guardians. When you have walked for twenty-three days alone in the desert, you will come back with the crown on your head.” Furiosa had never heard the words before—Pekkala had been queen of the Hellcats for as long as Furiosa had been alive. It had been Annie and Gale who taught her the Swaddle Dog and Hellcat words.

Toast nodded firmly, accepting her Test without a word. Beyond the second fire were four packs of supplies, sealed with a witch-charm to prevent tampering. But to get there, Toast would have to walk across burning sand, and she would have to do it alone. Somewhere in the fire, her bond would begin to stretch painfully. By the time she got to the packs, it would be unbearable. It was her ability to pick up a bag and keep walking that would determine whether or not she could be Queen.

Annie took Cheedo to be Mother and Queen to the Quick Lizard clan. The Lizards had always been travelers, story tellers, artists.

Gale took Capable into the Iron Eagle clan. The two had been working closely on a Council of Voices for the Citadel, and it made sense that they be bound by more than words.

Furiosa took the Dag into her mother’s clan. Of all the Wives, she understood the Dag least. They were too different for sympathy, too quiet for camaraderie. But the Dag had quick, clever fingers that grew things, and Furiosa remembered most of all the green smell of her mother’s hands. If there should be one thing that survived in the Hellcats, she thought, it was that smell.

All four of the Wives made it through the second fire. Outside it they stumbled, one by one, but they also stood back up. Furiosa turned to watch them, listening to the whispers spread through the crowds beyond the firelight as each Wife picked up a heavy bag and slung it over their shoulder. Aurelio and the other two witch daemons whistled their opening songs for the bags and did not move from their witch’s shoulders. Furiosa could feel the pressure of her daemon’s claws increasing steadily through the padding on her shirt. She reached across with her good hand to run a finger down the back of his neck, her left stump aching with the memory of cold and loss and the last time she’d worn a Wife’s whites.

“Keep the daemons company?” she whispered, watching the Wretched step aside, kneel down, struggle among themselves as the Wives passed through.

“I’ll keep them safe,” Aurelio agreed. “Who are you sending out to guard them?”

Furiosa did not let her expression even twitch towards a scowl, though she badly wanted to. She trusted no one to guard the Wives in their weakness. Or at least, no one who was _here_. But neither could she go herself—the Wives leaving was bad enough for the Citadel’s fragile stability. “I’m sending Annie and a fifth of the best Pups we have.”

Neither of them had to say that it was more than the Citadel could spare. Even the fires they had burned today was more than the Citadel could spare, but the Dag had been right. They could not be Wives in this place. Furiosa knew as well as anyone the power of a story to change reality. Joe’s story, rotten and white though it was, had kept him in power long after his sickness should have lead to his fall. Even if only one of the Wives survived the Test, it would be enough to set the Citadel firmly on another path.

“They’ll make it,” Aurelio said, feeling her sudden preemptive grief. “They’re strong, you know. They’ll survive this.”

Furiosa looked sideways at her daemon, smiling with only her eyes. “Even if they survive, they’ll have to give themselves up to do it.”

Aurelio ran his sharp beak through her hair, just now long enough to properly groom, and let that be the last word they shared for the night.


End file.
